


Fairies and Elves

by asparagusmama



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Childhood Friendship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Mentions of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Mentions of alcoholism, Moving House, mentions of childhood physical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 06:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2014782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James leaves Crevecoeur Hall for the last time, saying goodbye to his friends Paul and Scarlett for what he thinks is forever, to go to stay with his family. There he makes a new friend, his cousin. They become as close as brother and sister. Perhaps it is their right...?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fairies and Elves

Twelve years old James walked slowly down the Chase from the Summerhouse, limping with pain and clutching a copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, a parting gift from His Lordship. He had told James he loved him but he could no longer carry his father, the drunken old sot, especially since his beloved James was away at school for most of the year. Not that he wasn’t proud of him, of course he was. James was so bright, so special. James doubted it. He’d already gathered last night when he got back for the summer than Paul had begun to learn the piano again. Paul’s Mum had been so proud, His Lordship giving Paul another chance now he was older. Paul shook his head and said, stuttering his words, he was crap at it and his Lordship would get rid of him again. His Mum smiled happily and told James His Lordship wanted to help Paul with his homework, wasn’t that nice? Soon he’d be as clever as him. Paul shook his head behind his Mum’s head.

Now James had finally got back to his house. The white van his Dad had borrowed already was half full of boxes and furniture. “Alright Sweet pea?” his Dad asked cheerfully, strangely cheerful considering he’d been sacked and they were about to be homeless. He shoved the chest of drawers in the van and came up to James. “What’s that you got there sweetheart?” He stank of cheap Scotch. James took a step back.

“A book. Augustus gave me a book.”

“Augustus, is it? Miss him, will ya? All those sessions up in the Summerhouse, all those things he learnt ya?”

No, thought James and ignored his Dad and went upstairs. His Mum was in the living room wrapping her collection of china ornaments in newspaper and weeping silently.

In his bedroom doorway he let out an anguished roar and threw himself on the piles and piles of black bin bags that was all that was in his room. He started ripping and pulling out toys and books and clothes and tapes

“Panda! Panda!” he screamed over and over again, pulling more and more out of the ripped bags. He was finding it hard to breathe. 

Suddenly his Mum was there, holding him, stroking his hair, shushing him, reassuring him. She led him to his parents’ room and unzipped his travel bag, packed with clothes and Panda sitting on the top. He snatched Panda and hugged him tight, closing his eyes, pressing Panda to his face. Panda received the message about it happening again and sent understanding, loving vibes back.

“What’s all the fuckin’ noise?” His Dad was stomping up the stairs. He let out a long litany of swear words when he saw the state of James’ room. “Where is he? The little fucker. I’ll take my belt to him, the little shit.” He stormed into his bedroom and grabbed James by the arm, unbuckling his belt with his other hand.

“You can’t!” his mother screamed. “Joe! No! He’s been with His Lordship. You can’t!”

James’ Dad pushed him face down on the bed and started to take off his belt.

“I won’t let you!” his Mum shouted and threw herself on top of him. His Dad grabbed his Mum and pulled her away but something calmed his Dad down, as so often did. These moods blew up and cooled down so quickly.

“Alright, coz of His Lordship then,” his Dad sounded sick, fed up and sick.

Slowly, as if dealing with a wild animal James pushed himself up and turned around. He asked, politely, “Why are all my things in bin bags Dad?”

“We’re going to my brother’s, yeah, your Mum and me will be in the back room and you’ll be sharing with your cousin. We can’t afford storage, boy. We can’t keep nothing. Sorry Sweet pea.”

“Nothing at all?” James’ bottom lip trembled and he looked up at his Dad with big blue eyes, looking for all the world like his mother. Joe thought back to what his son had just had done to him. He stormed out in huff but returned a few moments late with a small box, just over a metre squared, and a shoebox. 

“Favourite toys in the shoebox, favourite books and music in the bigger one. That’s your lot Jamie; the rest goes. And don’t think you’re coming out of that room until you’ve cleared it all back in the bags and cleaned the room too, save your poor Mum a job.”

An hour later James sat surrounded by things, piles of things he could bear to be parted from (small), things he had to absolutely have (too much for one shoebox and one small box and a middle pile of not sure about. His Mum knocked on the door and opened in.

“Paul’s here.”

“T...t...to say g...g...goodbye.”

“Thanks Mum.”

“Do you want some Coke or something?”

“N...n...n...” Paul gave up and shook his head.

“Yes please Mum,” James said, still with the taste of Augustus in his mouth.

“I wasn’t offering you, cheeky.” He looked up at her with appealing eyes. “Oh, alright then. Sure Paul?”

“M...Mum doesn’t l...l...l...”

“Some juice then? Apple? Orange?”

Paul shrugged.

“I’ll surprise you.”

“Your stutter is worse! Far worse!” James said, appalled. He’d managed to get to stay with his new friend Will over Easter so he hadn’t seen Paul since Christmas. He felt faintly guilty, like it was his fault.

“Okay with you, I...I th...think. What are you... doing?”

“Dad is making me get rid of all of it, everything. I can choose my favourites for here.” He picked up the shoebox. “And I can’t decide!” he wailed.

Paul began to pick up James’ collection of fantasy gaming figures and place then in the box. He shrugged. James picked up the Matchbox car Paul had given him for Christmas and put it in. Paul held up a couple of knights. James sighed and shook his head, and then looked at the piles and piles of books, his tapes, the motley collection of toys, most of which he was far too elderly for at nearly twelve and three quarters, but they were his life. He had loved them. He picked up the wooden spinning top his Grandpa had made him the year before he had died. It went in the box. Nothing else would fit. He looked down, despairing. This was his life. Suddenly Paul had put his hand under his chin and lifted his head up. They looked at each other a few moments and then Paul carefully pressed his mouth to James’. James opened his mouth slightly in shock and Paul tentatively took the opportunity to flick his tongue in. It felt good. Nice. He put his hands to Paul’s face and kissed back and Paul put his hand to the back of James’ head. They both knew what they were doing; they’d both had lessons in the same place, from the same man. But this was not disgusting, frightening or dirty. This was magic.

Somewhere at the back of his mind James registered the door click, but still he didn’t pull away.

When they finally broke apart Paul was blushing. He looked away. “Sorry. You looked so sad,” he said without a single stutter.

“I’ll miss you Paul. Please, take what you want. Anything. Look after it for me. Oh!” James noticed the tray with the glass of juice, one of Coke, and a plate of rich tea biscuits, by the door. He fetched the tray. “You don’t think she saw do you?” Paul looked aghast and was all for running home. James managed to persuade him to stay.

However, Paul was half was through helping James cram as many books as possible into the metre squared box when James’ father smashed the door open, stormed across the room and grabbed Paul by the arm and, hauling him to his feet, propelled him out of the house coupled with a long string of swear words and homophobic insults. James tried to follow but his bedroom door was slammed in his face and the door locked from the outside. James yelled for Paul, tugging at the door handle and banging on the door.

A few moments later his Dad returned, belt in his hand. James began to back away. This time his Mum didn’t protect him.

Afterwards his father shoved duster, Hoover, cleaning cloths, polish and spray as well as new bin bags in the room and told him to sort it. Then, picking up the box of books and the shoebox of toys, he left, telling James to feel lucky he was nice; he was still allowing James to keep this shit.

As soon as he was alone James curled up on his side, clutching his knees to his chest, his eyes burned with unshed tears, but he wouldn’t cry. He never cried, not for his Dad, not for Augustus. He wanted Panda, but he was next door.

Eventually, knowing there was no comfort coming from anywhere and no choice but to obey, James started cleaning, sorting and packing. He found his old primary school bag and PE kit and looked at them thoughtfully. Before he could stop himself, he stuffed all his Tolkien and Susan Cooper in the school bag and topped them with as many as his favourite stuffed toys as he could manage, squashing the knights in the front pocket. He squeezed his favourite picture books from early childhood into the PE bag with the rest of the cars – he wasn’t bothered, it was his Dad trying to get him to be the little boy he’d dreamed of – but Paul loved cars, he had a huge garage and Scalextric set, the works.

Focused, James put everything else in the bin bags, kissing each toy and once the bags were knotted recited what he could remember of the funeral service. He put the rucksack and drawstring bag on the windowsill, the bin bags by the door, to block it more than anything then dusted, vacuumed and finally cleaned the windows, leaving them open.

Hanging out of the window, James lowered the bags as far as he could and dropped them, before grabbing hold of the branch, and for the last time, climbed out of his bedroom window. Once on the ground he grabbed the bags and struck of, creeping round the barns and ran through the wood, the long way to the Gatehouse. Paul saw him from his bedroom window and ran to meet him.

Puffed and too stressed to anything than stutter, Paul wrote down with a stick in the dust of the scrub, ‘Your Dad told my Mum. You’re dead if she sees us.’

James, also puffed out and also in screaming pain from buckle welts on his backside and other, more interior, pain from a morning in the Summerhouse, just nodded and held out the bags.

Paul nodded and then threw his arms around James, who put his head on Paul’s shoulder. Paul had two loving, if ignorant, parents and knew all about comforting. He held James and stroked his hair.

“Cr..cr...cry,” he instructed, but James shook his head against his shoulder.

“Not for him.” He pulled away and looked embarrassed. “What we did is a sin,” he said.

“F...f...fuck that!” Paul said and held James’ face and kissed him again. He pulled away. “B...bye.” He picked up the bags and turned back to his house.

“Look after them,” James called. “Especially my dog, he’s called Scruffy, and he was my second favourite when I was little.”

Paul turned and nodded, then grinned and waved and ran off. Once he was out of sight James turned and leant on a tree, letting out a loud groan. His Dad had never used the buckle end before. He leant his head against the tree and started banging it against the bark, the pain and interesting texture taking his mind off the very frightening fact his could feel blood in his jeans. He didn’t even know who made him bleed.

Half and hour later James was returning home, across the grounds, normally out of bounds for staff and tenants and their children but James was past caring, it was the quickest way.

“James! James!” he heard his name squealed. “I knew you would come to say goodbye. I knew it. You’re looking for me, aren’t you.”

Scarlett. Great. She’d been riding, still in her jogpurs and boots. “Hello Scarlett,” he said slightly nervously, the corners of his mouth twitching in an ironic smile.

“Oh I knew you wouldn’t go without saying goodbye darling!” She threw her arms around him.

“Bye Scarlett. Gotta go now. I snuck out, I have to get back...”

“In a minute, darling. I have an idea.”

Great: an idea. For the past eight years Scarlett’s ideas involved her involved in general naughtiness and he getting the blame. Mutely, from years of practice, he allowed her to take his hand and tow him to the fountain. She produced two pennies.

“We’re going to wish now. I’m going to wish for you come back after you’ve finished school a gentleman with lots of money and marry me. And so are you.”

“What if I don’t...”

“I’m going to cry. I can’t bear you going away and now you won’t wish that we will be together forever. I’m going to cry and cry and cry...”

James snatched a penny and threw it in the fountain.

“Say it then.”

“Wishes are private, Scarlett. You must wish in your head otherwise it won’t work. You have to change your wish a tiny bit to make it work now and keep it secret.”

“Of course darling.” She threw her penny in and then turned and grabbed him by his ears and pulled his head down to snog him.

Now that was disgusting. He pulled his head away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“James!”

“Sorry.”

“Bet that was your first kiss, wasn’t it? Let’s try again.”

“No thanks, I really have to go...”

“I’ll scream. I’ll say you made me!” She took a deep breath.

Sighing, James bent his head and kissed her gently. “Bye Scarlett. Have a nice life.” He turned and ran down the hill, past the lake and home. As he ran he thought about his wish and apologised to God in case wishes were witchcraft or idol worship or something. He turned his wish into a prayer,

“Please Lord, I don’t ever want to come back here again, ever. I don’t want my Dad to take his belt to me again and I never, ever want to see Augustus or have to do any of that again!”

A sudden sob erupted from nowhere and James had to hold his mouth to contain it. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said to God as he tried stop the sob, terrified as his subconscious had added, “Except if you change your mind Lord and I’m an adult and in love.”

“James?”

James looked up to see his Mum walking towards him from the barns.

“Quick, get back up to your room. Your Dad is ready to leave. Thank God I collected the rubbish.”

“They weren’t rubbish Mum, they were my life!” James let out an anguished cry.

“I know darling boy, I know. I’ve had let go too. He’s sold all he could, and just come back with the van empty. The rest went to charity shops, okay? Someone will buy and love your toys.”

James nodded and ran around to his bedroom window to begin the painful climb up his apple tree. Except it wasn’t his anything, and he would never wake to the scent of blossom and know spring was on the way, or reach out to help himself to apples in the autumn and know school was about to begin.

The van belonged to his uncle, which was where they were now going: Faringdon, where his Dad’s family all lived, one big, rambling, confusing, working class Catholic family, all thick as shit and resentful of his schooling. He was sharing a room with his cousin but he couldn’t place her, which one was she? His Dad had loads of brothers and sisters and they all had hundreds of noisy kids. Or that was how it always seemed to James at yet another family Christening or Wedding.

As they drove past the Gatehouse Paul came out and waved, chasing the car as James’ Dad accelerated away.

*

Hours later and James was still numb. He sat in a corner of the back room on a squashy old chair, hugging his knees. This was the only living room, his Aunt was in the front room, it was her bedroom. She had some terrifying disease that made her more and more unable to do things. James had to go and say hello to her. She was sat up in bed looking like a living skeleton, her face showing the pain and frustration. Her room had the only TV in the house. He had politely shook her hand, it had felt like dried up Autumn leaves. He didn’t recognise her, or his Uncle. Of his cousin there was no sign. She was like him, an only child. A weirdity in a Catholic family. He could see why she was, her Mum would have got ill after she was born and they wouldn’t have been able to do it. James never could work out why he was an only child, unless his parents committed mortal sin. They certainly did it, noisily. It was horribly embarrassing and one of the best things about being at school was not having to listen to them row and then listen to them make up. Ugh!

His Dad and his Uncle talked about his Dad finding work on local farms and his Mum started drawing up plans for spring cleaning the house and helping his Aunt. She had already cleaned the kitchen and got a casserole in the oven, along with an apple pie and a date and walnut cake. His mother never ‘wasted’ the oven to cook one thing.

The door banged and footsteps ran up the stairs.

“Martha?” his Uncle called. “Come and say hello to Auntie Rose and Uncle Joe and your cousin. You’ll be sharing your room with him.”

“A boy. You never said it was a boy!” A girl of about ten or eleven walked into the room, dressed in a torn short pink dress over purple leggings and dirty, old ballet shoes on her feet. She had pink, glittery fairy wings on along with a crown made of a daisy chain. “Oh, it’s not fair!” she erupted. “Now Georgia is going to Butlins and Cat is off to Ireland for the whole summer. Jade is already in Greece and Paula’s going camping in Wales. Why can’t we have a holiday? Let them stay and look after Mum and we could go, couldn’t we? I’ve never had a holiday. Da-aad!”

“Sorry,” her Dad apologised, grimacing. “Say hello Martha. That was rude. Show James your bedroom and then wash your hands. Tea’s nearly ready.”

Martha glared at him. Blonde curly hair and blue eyes in a skinny frame; she could have been his sister. From the look in her eyes she was thinking the same thing. As she’d not been to any of the family gatherings he’d never met her. If his Dad was the dark grey sheep of the family with his drinking and gambling and marrying the non Catholic Rose, Uncle Jon was the blackest of black sheep. James didn’t know why though.

Another two hours went by. Martha began to warm to his mother, if not him, purely on the strength of the food. James had always taken his mother’s cooking for granted, but he supposed that if your Mum was ill and disabled and your Dad a weird, straggly longhaired vegetarian hippie you might not know what real food tasted like. Although, he wasn’t that impressed with the lack of meat. It was the same herbs as the chicken and lentil thing his Mum had always done, just no chicken. He was shocked when, just before they were sent to bed, his Uncle started to make a very large cigarette that he realised was not just tobacco.

“Does your Dad smoke cannabis?” he asked, shocked.

Martha shrugged. “Bagsy bathroom first,” she said, running up the stairs, giggling, pushing him back.

James came out of the bathroom in his pyjamas, teeth brushed, a little apprehensive about sleeping in Martha’s very pink, girly room. A blow up bed and a sleeping bag had been put the other side of the room to her bed, and his suitcase, travel bag and the box of books and the shoebox of toys had been put next to the wall and then the sleeping bag next to them. He came in to find Martha sitting on his bed, all his gaming figures ranged out on the sleeping bag.

“They are mine! Put them back!”

“Wow. They’re beautiful, you have lovely fairies.” She sounded wistful and jealous. Hand drawn pictures couple with magazine pictures and one expensive picture of fairies covered the room, and a small shelf above the bed was full of plastic and china fairies, more in front of her small bookcase. James didn’t notice any of this. He was too outraged.

“They are elves,” he corrected firmly, throwing himself on the bed and beginning to put them carefully and reverently away. He’d set off vibrations on the blow up bed that had knocked over the small elvish folk and made Martha giggle. “Get off my bed and leave my things alone.”

“Is that all the toys you’ve got? Some small cute fairies? I didn’t know boys liked fairies.”

“They are elves! Get off my bed!”

Martha got up, and climbed into her own bed, gathering up a collection of fluffy stuffed animals and rag dolls and tucking them all carefully in her bed around her, in order. “No they are not, they have wings, some of them. And some of them are girls.”

Having finished putting them carefully away James wriggled into the sleeping bag and stuffed Panda in with him. “They are elves.” 

“No they’re not. Is that all you’ve got, then? Some fairies, one car and a Panda and a wooden thing.”

“It’s not a thing, it’s a spinning top. My Grandpa made it before he died. And my Dad made me get rid of everything. And they are elves! They are proper fantasy war-gaming figures. They are elves!”

“Oh! Oh! How horrid. Poor, poor James. Are your fairies your favourites, then? Out of all of your boy toys you chose fairies? Wow! We could be twins. I love fairies.”

“I said they are elves, not fucking fairies!”

“You swore. And I’m not blind. They’re fairies.”

“Elves. They are elves.”

“They are fairies.”

“They are my toys and I say they are elves.”

“Aha! You said toys not poncy gaming figures. And they are fairies.”

“Elves!”

“Fairies!”

This then went on for sometime, by which time Martha was so animated she was out of bed, jumping on her bed, yelling at the top of her voice, “Fairies! Fairies! Fairies!”

James stood up and yelled back. “They are elves. Elves!”

Martha jumped from her bed to he blow up one and bounced along it to James, “Fairies!” Bounce. “Fairies!” Bounce. “Fairies!” Bounce. “Fairies!” as she bounced of the bed and stood before James who pulled himself up to his full height and looked down on her and yelled,

“They are bloody fucking elves!”

Martha flinched a bit and ran to her own bed, saying, “You swore!”

“So fucking what? They are elves!”

“Fairies!”

“Elves!”

This went on until they heard Martha’s father call up the stairs, “Chill out kids. Chill. Get in bed, babies, and try to sleep.”

Martha switched the light off and whispered, “Fairies.”

“They are elves,” James hissed back.

“Fairies.”

And so it began again until Martha was jumping on her bed again, yelling at the top of her voice. She leapt on to James’ bed again, landing on him, curled up with Panda. He yelled in pain and stood up again, towering over her, his eyes gleaming madly in the light of the streetlight outside Martha’s window.

“They are fucking, pissing elves so shut the fuck up and leave me alone. They are not fucking fairies!”

“You swore! You swore lots! James, you will be in so much...”

Just then James’ father roared up the stairs, “You fucking little bastards shut the fuck up. If I hear another fucking word from you fucking little bitching brats I’m coming to tan your backsides!”

Martha stood, terrified, having never heard anyone yell like that, let alone an adult at children. She began to shake and whimper. “Your... your Dad is so scary,” she whispered.

“Yes. Yes he is,” James agreed, putting his arm around her and leading her back to bed.

“I hope my Mummy didn’t hear. She has medicine to make her sleep so she wouldn’t would she?”

“No,” said James. He sat on the bed beside her as she snuggled in the tiny space her toys left her.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“I s’pose.”

“My Mummy is dying.”

“Oh,” James said, horrified.

“Now it’s your turn. Tell me a secret.”

“I don’t have any,” James said, and then grinned. “I really don’t have any, not any more!” He snorted happily. “I’m free!”

*

Over the coming weeks Martha and James reached first a truce, then an understanding, then a deep friendship. Martha was hardly allowed to see her Mum as she grew daily and weekly worse and James never saw his as she was nursing and caring for her sister-in-law.

Most of the time, mindful of how she was scared, James just went along with Martha’s wishes, even wearing fairy wings too and playing in the woods at the back of the housing estate at the edge of the village. They climbed trees, made camps and talked. James talked about religion and heaven a lot, as Martha didn’t seem to be a Catholic, despite the family background. Both her parents were lapsed, had been in the hippie trail and had been Hindu, Buddhist and Pagan in their time and all three had rubbed off on Martha who wanted her Mum to come back as a fairy. 

James confided in her about Augustus, and which Martha showed both shock and a vicarious interest. He educated her into proper fantasy rather than twee, girly fairy fiction. Most nights he ended up in her bed reading to her until she fell asleep. Sometimes he woke to her wriggling into his sleeping bag, especially if her Mum had got so bad that she’d been rushed back to hospital or the ambulance had come out and checked her over. Also, however, sometimes when he awoke to her skinny, bony little form wriggling in next to him he found that it was his face that was wet with tears and she told him he’d been yelling out loud again, reliving the Summerhouse.

The fairies/elves debate raged all summer, inside and out, especially at bedtime, but often sitting on tree branches in the woods. Martha would get particularly indignant in the woods, home to fairies, and told him they would drop dead. James, offended, told her he never said he didn’t believe them or dislike them, just didn’t own any. He began proper medieval and pagan fairy stories at bedtimes.

One day, sneaking back in to steal some of James’ Mum’s homemade jam buns they overheard the doctor tell Martha’s Dad and James’ Mum that they were in the end days, it was a matter of days, weeks at the most. Martha ran out into the wood, running and running and running, deeper and deeper. James ran after her, further and further away from their usual area, still in Martha’s spare wings and a crown of flowers. He found her in a hollow of a holly bush, sobbing her heart out. He couldn’t fit in the gap so stayed outside, pleading with her. Suddenly he heard a voice behind him.

“What have we got here? A fairy boy? What you doing near our camp, fairy boy?”

He stood up and turned round. Behind him Martha crawled out and stood up beside him, whispering they were the Davis boys and their mates Patrick and Josh. She advised running, so they did, back up the hill to Martha’s estate as fast as they could, struggling more and more to breathe. Screaming, Martha began to climb a tree, encouraging James to follow, but his foot slipped and he was grabbed.

Martha screamed, and tried to make a break for it to get help but all she could do was watch her cousin beaten up, four on one, heavier older boys on one twelve year old boy only wearing the wings to make her happy.

James face impacted on a rock and blood spurted, a lot of blood, some from his forehead and a lot from his chin where a sharp flint had dug into his face. He felt nothing, as he impacted on stone and flint all he saw was a flash of bright light followed by deep blackness.

Martha screamed some more and the boys panicked and ran. She couldn’t wake him up.


	2. Death and the Angelic Barbies

They had to stay out of the way of the adults. James’ father wasn’t around much and his Mum was busy nursing Martha’s Mum while Martha’s father, who didn’t work, sat around smoking too much weed and weeping. When it rained they had to stay in Martha’s bedroom. There was no TV. Martha had a little tape player/radio, but a tape had tangled up in the player, so they were stuck with Radio 1 or Fox FM or nothing. Martha refused point blank to James’ requests for Radios 3 and 4. He spent hours the first rainy day trying to untangle the tape and fix the player, but he had no success. It began to occur to him that Martha’s family had less money than they did, as his Dad always seemed to produce money from somewhere half the time. He had long ago followed his mother’s example and did not ask if it had come from casual labour, the dogs or the horses or somewhere even less savoury.

Mostly when they were forced to stay in James just lay on his sleeping bag reading. Sometimes Martha would want to know what he was doing, but mostly she got on with her own thing. She had a motley collection of Barbies. Until her Dad had lost his job due to all the time out he had had to take to look after her Mum he had been a refuge collector, that is, he drove a bin lorry, and he had rescued a few discarded teenage dolls for his daughter. One doll had an arm missing, another had lost both feet, two had had their hair chopped – skin head Barbie and eighties lop sided Human League haired Barbie - and one had been drawn on all over, tattoo Barbie.

Because they came naked Martha got into the habit of making them clothes from cut old dresses left over from the jumble sales at the Methodist church down the road. Martha’s friend’s Mum ran the jumble sales and always saved left over dresses with prints she thought ‘that poor little girl’ might like. By the time she was nine Martha had got quite adept at making dolls clothes and had moved, by eleven, to also, if the fabric was good quality and a nice print and large enough to use, making her own clothes. She had a folder full of sketches of ideas, too.

The afternoon they took James to hospital in started to thunder, turning into a torrential downpour. They sat in Casualty in Swindon for hours before James was seen, conscious by then, first Martha’s Dad and then his, holding a pressure pad the nurse gave him to his chin.

Minutes after arriving with Uncle Jon his father arrived and pulled his brother away from the children. There was a hurried, whispered, conversation and Jon rushed off and left Joe. Martha sat on the seat next to her cousin and uncle, hugging her legs and sucking her skinned knees and listening to the thunder, flinching at every roll. It was her Mum; it had to be. Why didn’t they tell her? Why didn’t her Dad take her back too? 

She turned to look at James, who was sat on his father’s lap, who seemed to be holding him quite nicely, considering the way he shouted and swore at him. She couldn’t understand why James wasn’t scared of Uncle Joe. He terrified her. He was swearing now, about the blood, about the gang who did this, about James being bloody stupid enough to wear something something fairy wings and advertise the fact he was a something poof.

Was he?

Martha remembered the previous week, sitting up in her favourite tree, it had the most amazing branch, so big and wide, that curved to make an almost hammock, reaching out to the next tree, which was much easier to climb. It was a secluded, private sofa in the sky, hidden in the summer by the oak and beech leaves. She had shared it with James and sometimes they sat there, both reading, or he reading and her drawing clothes. James’ Mum frequently gave them sandwiches and a big bottle of made up squash so they had lunch and/or tea there, hidden. James hadn’t known quite why they hid so much until he’d paid for it with a split chin and a cracked head, but Martha was not well liked by the neighbouring kids. She was the one with the weirdo Dad and the weird clothes and the cripple Mum, who when she had been well enough to come out, with her pink dreads and long skirts and hand knit jumpers had been the weird cripple.

Martha had told James cousins were allowed to marry and proposed, so they could do this forever. James had smiled and gently, very gently, told her he was already promised to someone.

“That horrid Scarlett!” Martha had said at once. James had told her all about his parents’ boss’ daughter. He made it sound like they were William and Violet Elizabeth from Just William, always playing it for laughs to cheer her up.

“Absolutely not!” James had spat out. “No, God.”

“God!” Martha had cried, an almost alien concept to the semi heathen Martha. She had, the for the previous two weeks, gone to Mass with her Auntie and Uncle and James out of curiosity and had like the drama of the rituals, the bells and smell of incense. She had vague memories of going to Hindu temples with her parents as a toddler and it felt the same. The singing had been nice too.

“Yes,” James said, going pink.

“You can’t marry God!”

“No, I’m going to be a priest. I made a promise. You can’t get married if you are a priest.”

“Oh.” Martha thought about this. “What if you change your mind?”

“It’s not my mind, it’s what God wants.”

“Well, what if God changes his mind?”

“I still couldn’t marry you Martha. It wouldn’t be right. Besides, God doesn’t change His mind, because if He did I could marry...” James went bright red and put a hand over his mouth.

“What?”

“I can’t marry, it wouldn’t be right. Not fair on you Martha, I don’t really fancy girls.”

“Well, you are only 12.”

“You’re only 11 and you just asked me to marry you! And what about that boy in your class, George, is it? And all those bloody posters you’ve got of Will Smith?”

“Well, he’s gorgeous!”

“H’m,” James said thoughtfully, “perhaps. Maybe. I wish you had a TV. I really miss Lovejoy. And the repeats of Magnum PI.”

Martha thought about this for a few moments and then said carefully, “You have very, very, strange taste James.”

Now his own Dad was calling him an effing (she couldn’t even think the word) poof.

James, she could tell, was trying not to cry, and although his Dad was swearing and calling him a poof, his tone of voice was quite kindly and he kept hold of James tightly, like he did actually love him. It was weird. Her Dad got stoned, but it just made him a bit calmer and lazy, he never swore at her, never raised his voice, never told her off, just acted surprised and hurt if she did something wrong. Not that her parents had too many rules, and those they did were about keeping her safe or well and happy. They explained everything. She had to go to bed before them because children needed more sleep to grow big. You didn’t play on the main road because you might forget and get run over. You didn’t climb the trees around the electricity sub station in case you fell off and got electrocuted.

Finally they called James in and gave him five stitches, which she was not allowed to watch, and gave Uncle Joe a leaflet about head injuries after looking in James’ eyes and asking him stupid questions.

James was sent to bed but her Dad took Martha immediately to her Mum’s room, where she stayed. James snuck out at about eight o’clock that night but his Dad was drinking at the kitchen table. He shouted when he saw his son so James ran straight back upstairs. Of his Mum and everyone else there was no sign. His Dad came up half an hour later with a glass of milk, marmite sandwiches and an apple, kissed the top of his head and told him to stay where he was. He slept, the bang on the head giving him little choice. He awoke at around two to blue lights flashing and watched as Martha’s Mum was taken away. Uncle Jon got into the ambulance too and Martha was screaming. She wriggled out of his Mum’s arms and chased the ambulance up the road. Then, strangely, Fr. Jones came out and shook his Dad’s hand and his Dad shook his head. His Mum chased after Martha. He got into bed and hugged his legs and began to pray. He didn’t think there was anything else he could do. He had only ever half-believed his aunt was actually dying.

Half an hour later the cold, bony form of Martha wriggled into his sleeping bag.

“She’s not dead. She’s not. They will make her better in hospital.” Then she burst into tears.

*

It rained all week. Lapsed Jon reverted, his wife coming home for the coffin to sit in the front room to wait for the funeral. The family arrived in force. There were so many cousins James felt overwhelmed. There were not only his cousins, but also Martha’s through her Mum’s family. Both grandmothers organised everything, they were friends from the church. Jon and Christine had met at Sunday school all those years ago. When they thought the children and Jon couldn’t hear there were hissed whispers about Christine refusing the Host before she died.

Martha disappeared in the wood and James could never find her. Jon toked, Joe drank and Rose kept everything together, roping in her son to make tea and sandwiches, to bake cakes and to cook tea. James was torn. He wanted to find Martha but he couldn’t leave his Mum. He slowly noticed that all Martha’s pictures of fairies and designs for dresses were ripped up and the dolls missing. She was hardly there when she was there, staring into space at bedtime, ignoring everything he said. Since he was practically doing all the cooking and housework he was so exhausted he didn’t want to talk either, besides, he didn’t know what to say.

The day before the funeral, though, he snuck out, his Mum calling for him, but he didn’t care. He followed Martha into the woods.

She went deep into the wood, far down the hill, into a shallow depress surrounded by ferns and holly, crawling through on her hands and knees. Inside was like a real fairy grotto. Four fallen huge oak trees had made a square of trunks than were covered with ivy and creepers and new growth trees. Martha sat in the wet earth next to five small, recently dug mounds. She talked to them, telling them to look after her Mum. She looked up, startled, as she saw James spying on her. She screamed at him to leave her alone. Coward that his was, unable to know what to do to help her, he ran back to the house. His Mum met him in the back garden, so stressed with all the people coming and going and the drunk and stoned husband and brother-in-law, she slapped his face. James stood there, face stinging. His mother had never, ever, hit him in all his life. He turned and fled, running in the opposite direction, into the village centre and the play park next to the village green. There he met one of the gang, Patrick.

“You’re not dead then?”

“Obviously.”

“You staying with the weirdo?”

“She’s my cousin. My Aunt has just died.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry about, you know... Your chin is a mess.”

“It fucking hurts too.”

Patrick looked at James steadily following the use of the f-word. He offered him the rest of his Coke and then a cigarette. James hadn’t had a cola since they had left Crevecoeur, existing on healthy vegan hippie stuff like apple juice and hi squashes. He drank it eagerly and then tried the cigarette. He coughed. Patrick laughed and slapped him on the back. They sat side by side on the swings smoking and drinking Coke until the sunset, hardly talking. Once the sun had set Patrick got up and said he’d tell everyone Martha’s Mum was dead and to lay off her.

“And you’re alright, for a fairy. Here.” He handed James a couple of cigarettes and a box of matches.

James tried to smile. “Thanks.”

He tried to sneak back in but his Dad caught hold of him. Martha was still missing and everyone was on edge. The wider family had gone, Uncle Jon was weeping in the front room with the coffin. Joe smelt the cigarettes on his son and really laid into him with his belt and sent him to bed with no supper.

An hour later Martha crept into the bedroom.

“James?” she hissed.

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I was up our tree, I saw Uncle Joe... Oh God, are you okay?”

“Fine. Are you?”

“No.” She started to cry. James unzipped his sleeping bag and indicated she got in with him. She snuggled up to him and cried into his chest. Eventually she snuffled, “I want my Barbies,” before she cried herself into a fitful sleep.

Once he was sure she was asleep James carried her to her own bed, making sure he tucked all the rag dolls and soft toys around her in the right order before hurriedly dressing and then looking thoughtfully out of the bedroom window...

*

Martha awoke in the half-light to find herself in her own bed. James was curled up in his sleeping bag, snoring slightly. The curtains and the window were open and dawn light was streaming in, glittering a reflecting off something hanging from the ceiling. She wanted to stay half-awake forever, as at the back of her mind she knew that today they were going to bury Mummy in the Earth, when Mummy had wanted to be burnt, to turn to smoke and fly up into the sky and have her ashes scattered to the wind on the sea. It was cold in the ground and she hated herself for what she did to the Barbies. Then she looked up at the white, glittering, spinning, things that had been in the corner of her eye.

She squealed.

They were back. All five of them. In white dresses with golden crowns and glittery white and gold wings that shimmered in the light, hanging from string and wire from the ceiling above her bed.

They were angels.

She had killed her Babies and buried them in the ground and they had come back to her. She wriggled out of bed, rag dolls and soft toys spilling on the floor, and, standing on her bed to reach them, squealed,

“James! James! Wake up! My Barbies are angels! They came back! Mummy will be an angel too, won’t she? She’ll watch over me too, won’t she! James!”

James groaned and half-opened an eye. He pulled the sleeping bag over his head and moaned at the light. He was covered in mud, it had taken his forever to find the grotto and dig them up. Every finger was covered with pinpricks and glue.

“Yes,” he muttered. “Yes, she’s with God now,” he lied believing no such thing, the way she had been so rude to Fr. Jones hours before she had died. But who knew? God’s Grace and Mercy were never ending.


	3. Naughty Fairies and Fallen Elves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years on, when James has to leave his vocation behind, he turns to Martha for support, but finds she is the one who needs more support than he. They remember another time when James had shown up on her doorstep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James is 22 in this chapter, 15 in the flashback scenes.

It was pouring with rain on a late spring night. Half the lights in Morrell Hall were out and it was dark, too dark for him to easily locate the right block. Morrell Hall clung to the edge of Headington Hill, under Brookes University’s main campus and above South Parks. At just gone two in the morning the university was barely lit and of course the park was pitch black. Morrell was a collection of two and three story blocks of five to seven bedroom shared flats.

Eventually, after an hour of stumbling about in the dark, burdened by rucksack on his back, huge travel bag on his shoulder and pulling along behind him a suitcase heavy with books, and blinded by tears, he found the right block.

It was dark. Not a single room was lit. A window in the floor above her flat was open and he could hear music softly playing; trance music, something mellow, probably Orbital, he thought, or perhaps The Orb. In the flats behind him one room had a nightlight and laptop lit, casting an eerie green glow, but he could see no movements. He picked up a couple of small pebbles from the small flower garden between the two blocks. Aiming at what he hoped was the right window he chucked the stones.

They hit the window with a rattle.

“Martha!” he hissed.

He threw another small stone, this time with more force. It pinged against the metal window frame.

“Martha! Wake up!”

A light went on and a few moments later the curtains were pulled back and the window was opened.

“Dan! I said... Oh!”

She still looked ridiculously young, long fair hair in two plaits, eyeliner smudged around her face, dressed in a pink flannelette nightie. He was momentarily reminded of Rapunzel. Unfortunately he wasn’t her prince. In fact he was the one who could do with being rescued. No princes though, he was foresworn.

“Martha. It’s me.”

“James! Oh James! What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Can I come in?”

The window was closed and minutes later the front door was opened. She was bare footed but had covered her unglamorous nightwear in an equally chaste beige crocheted cardigan.

Sighing, James put on his rucksack, shouldered the huge bag and grabbed the suitcase by its carry handles rather than its pull-along one. He groaned with the effort. He followed Martha up the stairs and into her room. He gladly dumped his luggage. He had been lugging it around with his around Oxford since he’d arrived on the London coach at eleven o’clock that morning, not having a clue what to do or where to go, as somehow he just was not able to get onto that bus that would take him to Faringdon and the two mile walk to his parents’ home.

“Okay?” asked Martha, staring intently.

“No.”

“Tea?”

“Please.”

“Make yourself at home.” She left to go to the kitchen.

James shrugged off his damp coat and kicked off his soggy trainers. He felt light, odd, just in jeans, a tee shirt, and a zip up hoody. He’d grown accustomed at such a young age to dark suits or cassocks. He felt younger, less encumbered even as he felt terribly burdened. Guilty.

Despite his black mood curiosity got the better of him. Martha and he had always met in a cafe or a pub in the city centre when he would come to Oxford to visit, or sometimes at his uncle’s flat. It hadn’t been appropriate to visit her here, in a student room in a flat full of female students.

Ironic.

Pointless.

He picked up some sketches from her desk. Sublime. She was so good, wasted on mere, trivial, fashion in his opinion. They were good old-fashioned life studies. She was obviously taking a class in classic life skills. The human form, the male form. He was probably a student model, making a little money. That was, of course, unless he was in the class and volunteered. Could he do that, take his clothes of for money, or otherwise?

No.

Martha was so good. Some were in pencil, some charcoal and some ink. She captured light and shade on skin tone; shadow and the powerful feel of the man’s muscle, the amused sparkle or glazed boredom in the young man’s eyes, depending on the picture. He was beautiful, toned, handsome, rugged, masculine, naked, well...

James felt his skin flush as well as a more primal reaction. He hurriedly left her sketches on her desk and looked for a distraction. A rough outline of what may yet become a dress or tunic hung from her mannequin in shocking pink rayon. She had been busy. Pins, scissors, needles, and cotton covered the other table, a smaller one containing her small, old-fashioned treadle sewing machine. They were almost covering...?

James reached out and pulled out... what?

It looked like chemistry, a litmus test paper. He picked it up. It showed a faint pink line.

“Positive,” said Martha from the door. She pushed the door closed with her hip and came in, putting the tray on the bed, desk and table already occupied. Two mugs of tea and a plate of toast and an opened jar of peanut butter with a knife stuck inside sat there. The smell of the peanut butter made James slightly queasy. He’d not eaten properly all day.

“Positive?” he echoed, confused. “Positive what? I thought all your modules were Fine Arts and Fashion Design? Not chemistry.”

“Oh Father James, you are so, so naive!” she teased sadly.

“Not Father...” he began.

“Not yet, yes, I know. I know James. Years away.”

“Not ever,” James said numbly.

“Oh shit!” She sat down and patted the bed. He sat beside her. “Do you want me to ask?” she said after a while of awkward silence.

“Do you want me to?” James retorted. “I’m not that naive!” Besides, he could now see the packaging of the home test kit in the bin.

“Who shall go first? I must confess, I’m dying to find out what’s going on with you. That’s my fifth test. I keep hoping it’s a mistake. But it isn’t. Damn you and your bloody gently evangelism all those years ago. And damn Daddy deciding to go home to the Church after Mummy... after Mummy!” Martha’s voice wobbled at the thought of her mother. Never before had she needed her so badly since years before her mother had died. After all, for years her mother had been a declining, wasting, shadow of who she was in Martha’s infancy.

James was stung to take the blame, however gently and probably teasingly put. “I can’t tell you what to do, what to believe,” he said gently. He had to be supportive, that he knew, despite what she thought of him and his beliefs. “I wouldn’t condemn you, judge you, whatever you decide.”

“Thank you.” Martha looked down to hide the tears welling up.

“I have no right to. I’d support you, help you, go with you if you decide to... I’d keep it a secret, I’d never condemn you.”

“Well, aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves. Anyway, you might not condemn, but God would, wouldn’t He? Besides, never mind the new Catholic thing, I couldn’t on the way Mummy brought me up when I was little. I can’t kill it. I won’t. Not an option.”

Martha stared as James let out a relieved sigh, the breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Sorry,” he said.

“I’m not really blaming you for me being a Catholic now. After we left Faringdon Dad went back, big time. Had me baptized, First Communion, the works. I had to go to Sunday School, get laughed at because I knew nothing. I wrote to you. You never wrote back..”

“I’m sorry. I should have. I meant to, but... things happened that Christmas.”

“I know James. I know. You told me then, that time.”

 

*

Martha had been referring to the previous time James had turned up in the middle of the night on her doorstep in the rain. Except, the doorstep had been that to her Dad’s and her flat and James had been with his Mum. It hadn’t just been raining then, it had been a thunderstorm on a hot, sultry, heavy, August night.

James remembered. They had driven around Oxfordshire all day while his Mum thought, reviewed options. She occasionally muttered a family member or old friend’s name but rejected them. She wasn’t talking to him, he knew, so he had stared out of the window and tried to trust her. He hadn’t even known his mother could drive. He was fifteen years old and did not know whether his Mum could drive.

“Sorry Jon, we need somewhere to stay.”

“You’ve left the bastard?”

“Jon! He’s your brother. No, at least, not for good. He’s in a right state. James had him arrested.”

“James...?” Jon began, confused.

“He lost it,” Rose had said, and Jon had thought she had meant James until she had pulled her son from the shadows into the light of the doorway. Jon put a hand to his mouth. He knew his elder brother had a temper, but still! 

James stood, shivering, a skinny, tall, drowned rat in denim cut offs and a baggy T-shirt with a fractal design on black.

“James!” Martha had shrieked from her bedroom door, which was by the front door.

“You’d have better come in then,” Jon said, making room for them and leading the way down the corridor.

“I’ll just get our bags and lock the car,” Rose said, turning tail. James was afraid she was abandoning him and his eyes nervously followed her.

“Come on in then,” putting a gentle hand to James’ shoulder and leading him to the living room. When James flinched he put it down to bruising. “Since you’re up baby, put the kettle on, yeah,” he said mildly to Martha, who had followed.

In the harsh light of the electric bulb in the living room it looked much worse. James had two black eyes, a split lip and worse, his arms and legs carried scars of belt and buckle welts along with some livid scars as if a cigarette had been touched to his arms and legs again and again.

“Shit James!” Jon said.

“Uncle Joe did that?” shrieked Martha. “Do something Daddy!”

James stood there, blank eyes, head bowed, patiently waiting for his mother to return, even if deep inside there was a little panic that she wouldn’t and his bag was in the car. All feelings however, he kept locked down to himself out of sight. He was good at that.

“Jamie love,” Jon said, arm reaching out to touch his nephew. He shrank back, flinching. “What happened then?”

James looked down and hugged himself tightly. As soon as Rose returned Jon grabbed her and pulled her into the kitchen and shut the door, leaving Martha with her cousin. In such a flimsy 1960s build council flat they heard every word.

“Jesus girl, you’ve got to take him to hospital.”

“I can’t Jon. I can’t. They’ll call the police and he already spent last night in custody. They let him go with no charge, but look at him, they’d...”

“Rose, baby, maybe he should be arrested. You look at him.”

“It’s a one off. He’s never beat him up before. Belt, yes, but not... not like me...”

Jon noticed then the livid bruises on Rose’s face and arm.

“Please Jon. He’s your brother. I came here because I know my family would insist I divorce him and the rest of yours would make me go straight back to him. I’m just too ashamed to go to any of my friends. I’d thought my sister who works at Crevecoeur Hall, but I can’t take James there and... I thought.... Look, Jon, you owe me, for Chrissie.”

“I owe you?” Jon echoed. “I think you were the one debt paying there.”

“Please!”

“What do you want Rose?”

“We just need a safe place to stay, until Joe’s calmed down. Seriously, that posh Inspector and his bloody Geordie sergeant are gunning for Joe. They’ll pick it up if I take him to any doctor in the Thames Valley, I swear!”

Jon thought Rose was sounding a bit paranoid and more than a little hysterical. He sighed and tugged at his ponytail, a nervous gesture. “Okay, fine. You can have my room; I’ll kip on the sofa. I suppose they’re too old, but James can have Martha’s bed. She can sleep on the floor. That poor boy’s not sleeping in anything but a bed. If it bothers you, you can have Martha in with you.”

Rose laughed harshly. “James is as bent as a nine bob bit! I wouldn’t bother worrying about your daughter’s honour.”

Jon shrugged, glaring at his sister-in-law. “Maybe I was worried for your son, Rose. He’s a sheltered, public school boy and my daughter is a wild, hormonal teenager...”

*

In the living room James raised his eyes and they twinkled with dark humour as Martha huffed.

*

“...from a shitty state school.” He grinned, to show he was joking, although it was an accurate word to describe the school as far as he was concerned.

“She’s thirteen Jon.” Rose missed the irony and humour; she was too stressed and tired. “Besides, my son lost his honour. He’s been damaged goods since he was six years old.”

“Jesus! What are you saying? Is that why he went to the police? Are you saying my big brother’s a pervert? That he’s... he’s... with his own kid. Fuck off Rose. Out of my house. James can stay here, poor kid, coz yes, my brother has a temper on him and I know he hits you and belts the boy, but no... No! Jesus! Get out of here Rose...”

“You leave my mother alone!” James yelled, opening the door. “Dad has never laid a finger on me like that and she never said he did!”

“What? What?”

“It was at that posh manor house. The lord there. Before they came to stay with us. The summer Mummy... Mummy...” Martha said quietly from behind James. “Do you still want me to make tea Daddy?”

“Um. I’ll do it baby. Sorry Rose. Shock. Sorry. I’m so sorry. Last I heard James had run away from home.”

“The police brought him back yesterday and arrested Joe. He came home this lunchtime, drunk and angry. He’ll calm down.”

“No charge, you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay. Do you want a bath James? Or some painkillers?”

“I just want to sleep,” James said numbly.

“Martha?”

“Sure.” She touched her cousin’s back gently to guide him. He flinched and was not quick enough to hide the pain cross his face. When he took off his T-shirt to put on one of her father’s to sleep in she saw why. His arms and legs were nothing to the red welts on his back. Martha tried not to stare but it was impossible. 

“Do they hurt?”

“What do you think?” James snapped, getting into Martha’s bed and pulling up her pink quilt covered with cartoon fairies.

Uncle Jon knocked on the door and came in with Martha’s sleeping bag – pink and purple striped – and extra pillows.

“Alright James? Can I get you some tea? Hot milk? You’re shivering, baby. I think you should take some painkillers, yeah?”

“I want my bag,” he said tightly.

“I’ll get it!” Martha ran from the room while Jon picked up sewing and sketches to make enough room for the sleeping bag. Before he laid it down he gently, inch by inch, pressed his bare toes into the carpet, checking for pins and needles. He found two and stuck them into Martha’s small stuffed pig pincushion she had made years before at school in her first year, which had been Year 2, Chrissie and Jon not really having settled down and sorted anything until she was six. Finally he picked up the few Barbie dolls that scattered the floor, the same ones James had resurrected three years before.

I don’t play with them,” Martha said, watching from the door, hugging James’ rucksack.

“No. You design them clothes. I know,” James said. As Jon made up the makeshift bed for his daughter and then left James began to pull old rag dolls and teddy bears from under the pink quilt. “Do you still need these to sleep?”

Martha flushed pink. She was thirteen, too elderly for soft toys.

“Well, anyway...” James began to lob them at her sleeping bag. They landed in a pile by the pillow.

Martha sat down among them and unzipped his bag. She pulled out a Bible and a prayer book and clean underwear and then his battered Panda, slightly damp and a bit smelly. “He needs a bath,” she pronounced, wrinkling her nose.

“In the morning!” James snapped, reaching out to grab it and as he did so he cried out in pain.

“James!”

“Okay. I’m okay,” he insisted before turning his back to her.

Just then Jon returned with two teas, a glass of water and two white pills.

“Swallow these babe, okay? They’ll help. Rose should have got you something.”

“Don’t have a go at my Mum!”

“Alright. I’m sorry. She’s probably so used to it she’s forgotten how to feel. Joe always had a temper, James, but he does love you and your Mum. Promise,” but Jon sounded uncertain.

Martha looked sharply at her father; her very clever but drop out, always-stoned father. She knew the story off by heart, how they ran away together instead of taking their ‘A’ Levels, joining the fledging punk/hippie Peace Convoy, protesting against all sorts of things, before driving across Europe, Turkey and Iran to India with the new baby, with her. Now all her Dad did was run away into a cannabis haze every evening after his mind-numbing job as a scout at one of the colleges, cleaning up after posh gits he could wipe the floor with his intellect. She never inherited her father’s brains, but his nephew did, obviously.

“Did Uncle Joe hit you when you were kids, Daddy?” Martha asked as innocently and lightly as possible.

“Oh yeah. Of course. All of us. But mostly me. We were next in age and shared a bedroom. Didn’t mean he didn’t love me,” Jon emphasised, looking at James.

James snorted in disbelief. He seriously doubted his Dad loved him, despite the hugs and the drunken, maudlin, assertions that he was sorry, that he loved his son so much.

Once Jon had left, switching off the main light leaving the two teenagers in the glow of the bedside light and the pink fairy lights around the bed, Martha stood up and wordlessly handed James the painkillers and the glass of water. He took them and swallowed the pills and then drank all the water, realising he was very thirsty. He drained it in one breathless go. He then put it down and picked up his tea. Martha took hers and sat at the end of the bed, looking intently at him.

“Did you really run away?”

“Yes. I wasn’t much good at it.”

“Why did the police arrest your Dad?”

“You wouldn’t believe me Martha. Tell me about you.”

“I did write, you know? I tried to get your school’s address, but no one would give it to me. I sent you a Christmas card and a letter to your new house. You never replied. You were so nice that summer, but I suppose you got back to your posh boy friends and I was too young, too girly, too... common!”

“Martha! No! I meant to write, it’s just things... happened.”

“What things?”

“Nothing! Bad things! Awful things! I can’t talk about it.”

“Okay.” In a huff Martha took her tea with her to the floor and wriggled into he sleeping bag. She avoided looking at him as she placed all the dolls and bears around her. Then she picked up a book and turned her back to James, pointedly.

James sipped his tea and hugged Panda tightly. He rooted around the bottom of his bag, pulling out his fantasy war-gaming figures and started making them climb over his knees over the quilt. At fifteen he was far too old, he knew, but his head ached too much to read. He wanted to pray, to read the evening office, as he tried to do each and every day he could, but over the past fortnight his faith had taken a battering. Ever since his Dad had taken him to his new ‘friend’, the one who made ‘movies’, the one client too many, the straw, as it were, that broke the camel’s back. The very reason why James had run away.

James tried desperately to lose himself, to make up some quest for his elves, but he seriously was too old to play in such a way. They simply wouldn’t come alive for him in his head. He felt alone in the silence.

“What are you reading?”

“Jane Eyre.”

“Oh. How far have you got?”

“Actually,” Martha turned around, “this is my third reading. I love it. But Jane is just in the red room.”

“Mental abuse, that.”

“And physical. It all is! Poor Jane. And as for that school! I hope your school isn’t like Lowood.”

James smiled. “No. Nor Tom Brown’s School Days. I love school.”

“Do you have friends?”

“Not many, no. Too many snobs. But enough. And I love learning, and the class sizes are so small you can really... learn!” James said helplessly. “And the library. And all the sports facilities. And you should see the music rooms...”

“Okay. Okay. I go to Peers. It’s shit. A ‘failing school’. So shut up, okay. Dad’s doing all he can to get me moved to Cheney or Marsden, but it’s a big fight. And I don’t help, even though I’m desperate to move.” Martha grinned. “I see you’ve got your fairies.”

“Elves.”

Martha laughed. “I think I do know that by now!”

“Is that what your Dad meant by hormonal teenager. Are you hanging around the bad boys at your bad school?”

“Not really. I got suspended for punching the class bully. I got fed up with no one doing anything. There was this little Asian kid, bright, shy, and this fat shit from Cowley wouldn’t leave her alone. One day I heard the p-word one time too many and I saw red. Ayesha’s as English as you or me. Well, you. I lived in India ’til I was five. I speak Hindi better than Ayesha. What does that make me? The shit has started on these two new Polish kids now and our form teacher does fuck all!” Martha’s knuckles were white as she gripped the battered paperback of Jane Eyre and she shook with rage.

James was equally impressed with Martha’s righteous anger and shocked by her bad language. He remembered from before how Chrissie, Jon and Martha never swore. It was such a contrast to his own family it had impressed him at the time. It had made him more determined to try to stop himself. Now surviving Jon and Martha both swore, it seemed.

“You swore,” he said.

“Sorry. Don’t you, anymore?”

“I try not to.”

“Everyone swears at my school.”

“To use an expletive shows a paucity of imagination and a lacking vocabulary.”

“Get you! But you are right. Sorry.”

“But where does this hormonal stuff come from?”

“Puberty,” Martha said dryly.

James snorted.

“Okay, you asked. In only have a Dad, as you might have noticed, so he didn’t really cope well when I came on. He got so embarrassed he handed me over to the old ladies of the church who talked about Eve’s curse and had had their menopauses before the invention of modern stuff like Tampax. Oh, and that’s sinful, by the way. Do you believe all that stuff?”

James, now beetroot red, seriously considered the question. “I suppose it’s a question of physical virginity, to imitate our Holy Mother, but it sounds backwards and wrong-footed to me.”

“And as a priest – I take it God hasn’t changed His mind yet? – what would you say?”

James shrugged, wanting this conversation over five minutes ago. “I don’t know. Be clean and comfortable.”

“But it is in the Old Testament, isn’t it? Periods being sinful. Right up there with being gay. You can’t pick and chose.”

“Shut up.”

“Still gay then?”

“I’m not... I’m not...”

“Swallow that lie down boy! Your mother said you were. Still fancy Lovejoy?”

“Shut up! Still fancy Will Smith?”

“I suppose stuff goes on, at a boys boarding school?”

“Not with me. I don’t do... Martha. Can we stop this?”

“Come on. Is it such a sin? Who do you fancy? Who do you love? If you had to kiss one boy, who would it be?”

“You first.”

“Tariq. He’s in Year 11. He’s gorgeous. We go to the Art Club. He’s a fantastic artist, too. He does these blowing abstracts around Arabic calligraphy. He’s tall, skinny, black hair and the deepest brown eyes. He won’t date, though. We talk about art mostly, but when I meet him out of school he brings his sisters. I seriously think he’s more uptight than you. He won’t even kiss until he’s married!”

“And you in Year 8. You sound in love.”

“Maybe. What about you? If you absolutely had to?”

James thought about various actors and musicians, about his Latin Master – young, dark hair, toned muscle; ran the weekend rowing club, was also a house master, although sadly not his – before moving to Will. Will had never quite forgiven the laugh and had hung about with Jonjo a lot that last year. Now he was gorgeous. Jonjo?

James’ mind flittered back to the previous day. It felt like a lifetime ago. He thought about the sergeant, such deep, deep blue eyes with such dark hair. They way he moved gave the impression he was really strong and lithe under that cheap, appalling suit. He’d been different to any man James had met before, honest about his feelings, his sexuality, to his boss, and yet so completely devoted and in love with his wife, completely faithful. And safe, rock solid safe.

He’d liked the Inspector too. The fantastic music he’d played on the journey down the A420 to Faringdon. The fact he’d recognized the poetry James had quoted, was interested in his scholarship, his studies, his opinions. In him. Silver haired, smart, expensive suit, like so many of those... men. But so unlike, so kind. The kind of man James would want for a father.

But not the sergeant, not for a father, if...

“I don’t know Martha. It’s scary, to be with another boy, a man. I don’t think I could, I... I....”

“I don’t think God hates gay people. Truly!”

“No offence Martha, but you are only thirteen. But it’s not that.... Martha... Martha! Can I trust you?”

“James! You are the only cousin I know properly. You gave me hope when I could have curled up and died. I wanted to, you know. Just join Mummy and the Barbies. I think it’s why I buried them. I love you James. You’re like my brother. Every time I look at your poor face I just want to kill Uncle Joe. You CAN trust me not to laugh or whatever it is you’re scared of.”

“I’m not afraid you’ll laugh.”

“Okay.”

“It’s to do with why I never wrote back.”

“Okay. I’m not angry. I forgive you.”

“I... I... Dad knows these men. You know he gambles and gets into debt?”

“Yes.”

“You know about what Augustus did to me at Crevecoeur?”

“Yes. Horrible.”

“I think Dad was desperate for money, to start with, and he showed this man my picture and told him about Augustus. Dad’s weak and this man paid all his debts. I think he thought, Dad thought, that... because I’d already done... those things, it would... would be alright.”

“James!”

“Augustus made me feel special. He taught me piano, to read music. He showed me a whole world of the classics, of music, of literature. He got me the scholarship. He... he loved me!”

“James! That man did not love you! You were a little child and you don’t do... that... to little children. Not if you love them.”

“But these men... they were many, after the first,” James went on as if Martha hadn’t spoken. “They didn’t love me. I was a thing. They paid – they pay! – Dad money to do whatever they want. I have to do what they want. I won’t look at them! I never look at them! And I won’t kiss if I can help it. I won’t! But they... they... I try to close my mind, relax my body, but... It’s my mouth I hate the most. I have to concentrate; I can’t switch off and just go inside myself. If I do daydream I choke. And I have to... swallow. Fight the disgust. All I want to do is be sick. I hate it! I HATE IT!”

“Oh God...” Martha climbed into her bed and hugged James. He wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her chest, noticing dimly she wasn’t quite so bony – there! – anymore.

“The other stuff, I can just switch off, really. And it stops hurting after the first... bit. I just... just... Martha, you are right, I am gay, but I couldn’t... couldn’t... Even if I wasn’t Catholic and didn’t know it was a sin! If I were in love, he’d want me to do... those things, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t...” James began to cry messily. “I couldn’t feel because it would feel like those men were...”

Martha stroked James’ hair, out of her depth, while he sobbed.

“Is this what you told the police?” she asked when he had calmed down, when he was still and quiet in her arms.

James nodded into her shoulder. “No evidence. They let him go. I don’t know the men’s names. I was useless.”

“Oh James.”

“But I don’t want my Dad to go to prison. Mum would too, wouldn’t she? Because she knows too.”

“James, you must tell again. Let me. I’ll tell Daddy. Or we’ll phone Childline. Something.”

James shook his head and held her tighter. “I don’t want my parents to go to prison. I love them. I do. They’re all I have.”

“Oh James...”

“Promise me you’ll keep this secret.”

Martha paused, not liking the idea, then sighing said, “I promise. Let’s hope Auntie Rose decides to stay here until you have to go to school, then. At Christmas you’ll be sixteen James.”

“What?” James sat up, wiping snot across his bruised face with the back of his hand.

“Sixteen. Over the age of consent.”

“Twenty one is the age of consent for two men.”

“Still, legally an adult in lots of ways. Make sure you grow a bit next term. So the perverts won’t want you. You’re almost not a child, right?”

“Oh.” James said flatly, taking on board what Martha had said. Then he beamed, a beatific, happy smile. “Oh yes! Yes I will be! I’ll be too old, too big, for all of them!”

“Yes,” said Martha, fingers crossed behind her back.

*

Now James stared at Martha’s messy floor in her student room, silent and brooding. “Yes. I told you. I only ever told you, until Cambridge. And as for the Church’s attitude, it’s appalling. A phrase that springs to mind is sucks shit through a straw. Stupid and insensitive and I swallowed the lot.”

“Is that why you...?”

James shrugged. “Not really. What about you, Martha? What will you do?”

“Dunno. I can’t quite get my head around this. I’ve been wondering for two weeks, and I’ve done five tests in three days. They’re not cheap, either.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t know.”

“Is it, um, is it Dan’s?”

“James Hathaway! You pig! Of course it’s Dan’s. This is so stupid. It’s entirely my fault. He’s going to hate me!” Martha put her head down in her hands and began to weep. James put his arms around her, selfishly glad not to think of his own problems. He grabbed tissues from her bedside table and handed them to her, one by one, still holding her, until she had composed herself.

“It takes two to tango,” James said when she looked up, dry-eyed. “Or, rather, two to make a baby.”

“Yes, but I lied.”

“Lied?”

“He was all for using condoms, but me? I thought I’m supposed to be Catholic, so I told him I was on the Pill.”

“And you weren’t?”

“Contraception is a sin.”

“So,” emphasised James, “is sex outside marriage. And ‘thou shalt not give false testimony’. Lying is bad, Martha, I won’t pretend otherwise. So what will you do? Tell him the pill failed, or the truth? Do you love him?”

“You know I do! I adore him! But since I was... late, you know? I’ve refused to see him. James, you’re shivering. Let’s get into bed.”

They squeezed into Martha’s bed and drank tea and ate the toast.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to eat peanuts when you’re pregnant. It’s to prevent the risk of the baby developing an allergy. And caffeine is bad. You need to switch to herbal or decaf. You ought to get some folic acid. You need a book. I’ll buy you one.”

“James!” Martha hissed. She ate the rest of the toast and then guiltily offered to make some more.

“I’m not hungry. I feel sick, to tell the truth.”

“I’m the one who’s supposed to be feeling sick. But I’m just ravenous, all the time. Starving.” She switched off the light and snuggled into James.

“You have to tell Dan. Give him a chance. And see the doctor. I’ll go with you, first thing tomorrow morning.”

“James!”

“Someone’s got to look after you. It should be Dan. He loves you.”

“Don’t you?”

“Not like that. But,” he touched her belly, “that’s my little second cousin in there. We have to look after it. Him. Her.”

“Oh God James! I’m pregnant!”

“Are you afraid?”

“Bloody terrified! But you, what about you? Did you walk out or were you expelled or whatever they do to you? Defrocked?”

“I wasn’t ordained, Martha, so I can’t be defrocked! Honestly, what a word! No. There was a big meeting, yesterday. It was ‘agreed’ I lacked the ‘right attitude’ and had ‘poor judgement’.”

“What does that mean?”

“Lots of things Martha. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“But, in a word?”

“It’s more complicated. I made a terrible, terrible mistake, but in the eyes of my confessor I did the right thing. I can’t hold down those contradictions. I can’t! Not anymore.”

“Well, why not? The Trinity is one big, huge contradiction and you don’t struggle with that like I do. I just ignore it and concentrate on God the Father. Easier, somehow.”

“Easy, maybe, if you have a loving father.”

“Oh James. What am I going to tell Daddy?”

“The truth.”

“And what are you going to do? Where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know. Not home. I want to still do something where I can serve, help people. I need to atone.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong.”

James snorted. “Right!”

“Look, I don’t know what your mistake was, but God is a Loving Father who forgives us our sins. He doesn’t bear grudges.”

“Did you know what one of the priests called me? Mary Magdalen.”

“What? Why?”

“Because she is identified as the prostitute who wept at Jesus’ feet.”

“Jesus wept!” exclaimed Martha. “One, she was Martha’s sister, a follower of Jesus, who listened to him rather than just rushed about waiting on the men folk. Two, that sounds like a load of patriarchal claptrap designed to discredit a clever and spiritual woman. No surprise there, then. But you? Why call you that?”

“I had to... confess everything.”

“James!” Martha held him tightly and kissed his neck, she couldn’t reach his face from where she was. “That is not your sin to confess.”

“I was told, time and time again, it was a blessing, a call to celibacy.”

“Bollocks!”

“It was another contradiction I found too hard to reconcile. And you are right; it isn’t my sin. But still, he called me Magdalen and then, sometimes, Jezebel.”

“Your confessor?”

“Yes.”

“Called you that? In front of others?”

“Yes.”

“A tart, in other words. A whore. He called you that. The bastard.”

“Martha... don’t.”

“Did they kick you out for being gay?”

“It’s far, far more complex...”

“Yes or no?”

“I started to question their teachings...”

“Yes, then.”

“A bit. Maybe. Lots of reasons Martha. Lots of reasons.”

“Look, Jamie sweetie, you are as pure as the driven snow. I’m the scarlet woman around here.”

“No!”

“As far as the church goes.”

“Well, yes, but...”

Martha and James sat up and stared at each other. “Grandma!” they said at the same time.

*

James stayed a week. In that week he got her to the doctor, got her to student services and her name put down for a flat for the following academic year plus on the waiting list for a crèche place. At the Modular Office he helped her arrange to explore the option of switching her degree to part-time. He made her nourishing meals and bought vitamins, he held her head when she was sick in the mornings and then brought her sweet tea and dried crackers. In fact he ended up feeding the whole flat, as young women would wander in while he was cooking, sniff and beg for a portion. He went with her to her father with all the plans she had made. Jon, who had married Chrissie when Martha was six was in no position to come the heavy father and didn’t even try. He offered to switch to a night job and have the baby at home with him in the day. He told her to come home.

James and Jon between them both tried and tried to persuade Martha to see Dan, to speak to him, to explain, to tell him he was going to be a father! But Martha remained stubborn and unmoving. Dan himself left messages, sent e-mails, texts and voice mails, along with notes via friends and messages with Martha’s flatmates. He pleaded to know what he had done wrong. He kept telling her he loved her.

Then disaster struck. Fed up with taking all the broken-hearted messages from Dan, one of Martha’s flatmates let him in late one night. He came into Martha’s room to see her curled up in bed next to James.

Martha chased after him in her nightie, screaming and pleading that it was nothing like that, that he was her cousin and gay, but Dan was too hurt to stop, to listen. Too late Martha realised how much she loved him, how much she needed him.

James decided he needed to leave. He didn’t move far, he moved in with his Uncle Jon. He signed on and looked for any casual work while he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. Surprisingly, when he was thinking or praying about his future, the police force kept jumping into his mind. He wasn’t police officer material, he didn’t think, he was too thoughtful, too cerebral, too educated, not... something, macho was the wrong word, but not a team player, not interested in crime fighting and driving fast cars, not... he didn’t know what he was, except he knew he wasn’t really police officer material! Besides, his Dad was as bent as they came, always existing on the hinterland of the law, and his uncle was a hash-head and a sometime small time dealer. He didn’t want to have to arrest family!

Martha came home in May, for reading week, having been unable to make up with Dan. James wanted to find him, explain, but Martha wouldn’t let him. Besides, she said he had gone home to Yorkshire to his parents, so his roommate had told her.

Martha knew how isolated her Dad had been, how lonely, coming home with her mother so ill with motor neurones only to have both families reject them, even after they married. Certainly they hadn’t been welcomed with open arms like the Prodigal Son. She didn’t want to be the cause of them rejecting him a second time. Dad went to mass now, and her baptism and first communion had been a family reconciliation. She knew he would stand by her come what may, and this would cost him the family again. Desperately unhappy, heart-broken and afraid, although later she would always put it down to pregnancy hormones, she proposed for a second time to her cousin.

James, of course, laughed at the first few attempts. Martha would not take no for an answer. She offered him a sexless marriage with a ready-made baby to take care for. She promised to look after him, to forgive him in advance if he ever changed his mind about being celibate, if he found a boyfriend. She pleaded. She coerced. She blackmailed. Browbeaten, after days of relentless demanding and threatening, James said yes.

Martha then presented her plan to her father. Perhaps her later diagnosis had been correct, perhaps the hormones had driven her temporarily stupid or mad, but she had expected her father to be ecstatically happy.

James had been expecting his uncle to have reservations and concerns. He’d hoped for rejections and help persuading her out of this course. What he hadn’t expected was the extreme, emotional, over-reaction.

“It’s impossible! Utterly impossible! I forbid it Martha! You absolutely cannot marry him!”

Jon had never forbidden Martha anything in her life. A huge, horrible row followed, with neither side listening to the other, or to reason. James sat on the sofa, the shouting ranging over his head, not really wanting to marry Martha but stung by his uncle’s sudden, vehement, rejection of him.

Eventually both father and daughter were in tears. Desperate, no longer thinking clearly, Jon yelled through his tears,

“It’s against the laws of the Church, of nature. Of God. Of England! It’s just bloody wrong and impossible!”

James looked at Jon, horrified, and then stared at Martha. Skinny, tall, blonde, blue eyed Martha, so alike she might be mistake for his sister, so he had always thought.

It turned out there was no might about it, no mistaking but seeing. But was Joe Martha’s father, or Jon his? Who had betrayed whom? Wild, hippie Chrissie or uptight, devoted Rose?

He felt like the world was spinning too fast, as if gravity had failed, as if everything he knew had been thrown off, a flat spin, floating free-fall...

He wasn’t the only one. Martha had fainted. Panicked, James ran from the flat leaving his Uncle to deal with Martha.

James walked the streets for hours, not knowing what to do, what to think, how to feel. He had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. His parents were still not speaking to him following his dismissal from the seminary. He had had friends but they were either lost with his lost vocation or hated him for his treatment of Will.

Eventually, still not knowing what to do or where to go, he found himself at Dan’s Hall of Residence. He was given an address in Yorkshire. It took him half a day to hitch to Scarborough, the rest of the day and half the night to find Dan’s parents’ house. He had no money; he’d not eaten in 24 hours. He sat on the path outside waiting for a decent hour to knock on the door. When he did Dan’s mother saw an impossibly tall, thin, pale young man shivering on her doorstep. She hurriedly called Dan, who came in his boxers and a T-shirt, hair sticking up on end and unshaven. He’d never met James but Martha had shown him pictures.

“I’m her brother. She loves you and needs you. She’s having your baby,” he managed to say before he passed out.


	4. 'I've not gone to the dark side - the psychedelic side maybe?'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James discovers the truth about his origins, after arranging a happy ever after for Martha! He also declares his intended future plans now he is no longer to be a priest.

Dan’s mother, a nurse, took over as Dan stood, in a daze. James was given water and sugar, followed by sweet tea and scrambled eggs. Following a bath, during which Dan’s mother tumble-dried his wet clothes James was interrogated and questioned. All he would do was to reiterate how Martha needed Dan. Dan’s mother, now not distracted by skinny, fainting, young men, was hysterical, half-angry with Dan and half-protective. All James could do was listen and make soothing noises.

Four hours after he had arrived he and Dan were on their way back down South in Dan’s beaten up old, red, VW Polo coupe, the back seats down, stuffed with all his stuff. While his Mum had ranted at James, Dan and his father had packed the car as if he were leaving home for good, not the last half of one ten week semester.

For the first few hours both men were silent, Dan playing music from his teens really loudly and James, after he had dozed a while, staring blankly out of the window. He looked to Dan as if he was in a stupefied funk, but in reality James was contemplating all his options.

“I thought you were her cousin,” Dan said finally, switching off his car stereo.

“So did we,” James replied.

“Uh?”

“Long story. I don’t know it so don’t ask.”

“Why say it then?”

“It has to be done, doesn’t it?”

“Did she send you? She could have phoned. Texted. E-mailed. Written even. Or, I don’t know, just a wild idea – she could have talked to me in the last few weeks!” Dan voice shook a little, and he gripped the steering wheel a little too tightly.

“She should, I told her,” James agreed mildly. “She doesn’t know I came. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“And you hitched all the way?”

“No money.”

Dan switched on the car radio. They listened to the news and then Just A Minute. Laughed, despite the tension. Dan switched it back off as The Archers began.

“Why on Earth didn’t she tell me in the first place?”

“She thought you’d be angry, blame her, hate...”

“Dump her?”

James shrugged.

“So she ignored me? Pretended that I didn’t exist?”

“Yup.”

“Or even that she wasn’t pregnant, knowing her.”

“She tried. I wouldn’t let her. Stopped her drinking coffee and alcohol, got her vitamins and things.”

“Thank you. But that’s my job.”

“That’s why I came.”

“Did she really think that if she ignored it all it would go away?”

“Yup.”

“Well, that’s Martha, I suppose.”

There was a pause as Dan coped with a speeding lorry cutting him up on the inside lane.

“Bloody nutter!” he glanced at James and finally said what was on his mind. “But I saw you in bed with her.”

“Not like that!” James protested hotly.

“But you thought you were cousins?”

“Not. Like. That,” insisted James, his cheeks flushing hot and red, his voice rising with stress. “I’m not like that.”

“Are you the one training to be a priest?”

“I was.”

“Not anymore?”

“Nope.”

“Did you change your mind?”

“They asked me to leave.”

“Why?”

“It’s complicated.”

“But you jumped into bed with your cousin for comfort, yeah? Went wild?”

“Not like that! She was scared about the baby, I was... confused? Unhappy? Okay, scared too. We cuddled up together, like we did as children. Nothing happened. I’m not like that.”

“Like what James?”

“I don’t like girls. Not like that.”

“So you’re gay?”

“I’m not...! It’s difficult to explain.”

“If you don’t like girls then you like boys.”

“I’m celibate.”

“Sure. You were at a Seminary. Not now, though.”

“Still a sin. Still have to be celibate.”

“People sin, James. Look at me and Martha. Sex outside wedlock, right? And me a good Catholic boy. I’d have waited, but Martha... Martha... well, she’s persuasive, isn’t she?"

“What will you do?”

“Do James? Do? Stick by my girlfriend and our baby. Marry her, if she’ll have me. But you know Martha, she goes her own sweet way, head stuffed full of a dozen religions and myths and believes as she likes, picks and chooses.”

“And you don’t like that?”

“I love it! She’s exhilarating! Did they kick you out for being gay?”

“I said it was complicated.”

“Stupid! Priests are celibate. So how can it matter who you fancy if you do nothing.”

“Well, er...”

“Oh look. Services. I need a piss and a strong coffee. Bet you could do with a smoke.”

*

In the harsh glare of the service station Dan stared at James when he wasn’t looking. He had a haunted, pained, thoughtful, expression. He looked like Martha, he really did. He had the same eyes, same cheekbones, the same impossible fairy blond hair. He could easily fancy him if he wasn’t already in love with Martha.

“You should grow your hair a bit. It’s a bit harsh, makes you look like you’ve been kicked out of the army, or prison even, not the priesthood.”

“Why would I do that?”

Dan shrugged. “Make the best of yourself? To look good? Dunno.”

The services were crowded. At the next table were a family of two sets of parents, seven children, a screaming baby and a deaf grandmother who kept shouting the same thing over and over again. Behind them a group of young men dressed as builders or labourers of some kind. A coach party of noisy, happy Liverpudlian pensioners milled about, a so did another of Brummie Asian Muslims returning from Hajj, all of the men’s heads shaved, some shivering as they re-adjusted to England’s’ damp, chilly, climate.

The noise and crowds pressed on James’ head. He gazed openly now at Dan. The photos Martha had shown him did not do him justice. Hazel eyes, square jaw and dark, curly hair gelled upwards in an upstanding quiff. His broad shoulders carried well the Rugby shirt and tartan quilted over-shirt. He hadn’t shaved for a few days and his chin was covered with the darkest of shadows, almost but not quite yet a beard. James tried to image a fusion of Dan’s ruggedly handsome and Martha’s delicate, beautiful, features. Would it be a boy or a girl? Dark or fair?

“Have you finished your coffee?” Dan asked, unfazed by James’ staring. “Shall we go?”

*

Martha flung open the door to the ground floor flat. “James! Where have you been? I’ve been so worried!” she paused as saw a figure behind James, in the shadows. “D-Dan?”

“Hello Martha love,” Dan sad awkwardly, shyly, looking at his feet.

“Dan?”

“Martha?” he stepped forward and put a hand on her belly.

“You know?”

“James told me.”

“Is that where’s you’ve been?” Jon asked over the top of his daughter’s head.

“You don’t mind?” Martha said at the same time.

“Mind? Mind our baby! Are you crazy?” Dan demanded as James nodded mutely at his uncle... at his father, maybe?

Martha and Dan fell desperately into each other’s arms on the doorstep as Jon pushed past them. “Come on James, these two babies need some space. I’ll stand you a pint. And try to explain.”

“Yes. You do owe me an explanation,” agreed James forcefully, then adding, “and I’m starved.”

“I’ll get you some chips. Or a pie. Whatever you fancy. Come on Jamie baby.”

*

Once they were sat in a dark corner of a quiet pub, pints and food in front of them, Jon looked embarrassed. 

“Where do I start?” he asked awkwardly.

“I want to know who betrayed whom? Who is the father? Which mother cheated? I’m guessing Chrissie and Dad - Joe - because – no offence Uncle Jon, but Auntie Chrissie was a wild hippie and my Dad’s a total bastard but my Mum is so besotted – no obsessed! – with Dad. And you’re still in love with Chrissie, aren’t you? You’ve been alone for nearly ten years without ever dating, haven’t you?”

Jon looked stricken for a moment and James began to regret his words. Whatever had happened it was over twenty-two years ago, although yes, he supposed he did have a right to be angry. He was about to apologise when Jon took a deep breath and said, “No-one cheated on anyone.”

Now James gave into his bubbling anger and he snapped, “No! That’s just crazy! I know you guys were together for years before I was born, and so were Mum and Dad!”

“Okay James, baby, I’m going to tell you a story, okay? About how it all came about. But first, to put your mind at rest, let me tell you...” Jon started to laugh nervously, and then more than a little hysterically.

James glared angrily. This wasn’t funny from where he was sat. Jon caught the angry glean in James’ eye and calmed down enough to say,

“I can’t say it without sounding like Darth Vader. Believe me, I’m trying...”

James lips twitched in an upwards curve. “Don’t chop off my hand," he said, and then smirked. His Dad wasn’t his Dad. That bastard was nothing to do with him. But how? Jon said no one had cheated, but what did that mean?

“I’ll try to explain. And despite what Grandma and the family think, I’ve not gone over to the dark side – the psychedelic side maybe.” Jon grinned. “Let me explain baby.”

*

Rose and Joe had married young and moved to the Crevecoeur Hall Estate where, at first, Joe was assistant Games Keeper. Rose’s sister worked up at the house, and Rose began part-time in the kitchens. Meanwhile Chrissie and Jon had had enough of everything: family hypocrisy, Church, school, society itself. They ran away a few weeks before they were due to take their ‘A’ Levels and go to university. They both would have had been the first in their families. They ran away with an original 1960s hippie, staying with him in his caravan until through hard work fruit picking throughout the summer plus busking and labouring when they could find it, they bought an old, beaten up VW Camper Van and became independent.

After a couple of years on the road, Chrissie and Jon arrived with a group of old hippy and new punk misfits and dropouts to camp on the edges of the Crevecoeur Hall Estate. It was too early for these people to be labelled anything but layabouts and dropouts and weirdoes, the peace camps that gave birth to the Peace Convoy and the later phrase of New Age Travellers were still four years away.

After the first night the Estate Manager, Games Keeper, and their underlings arrived with dogs and guns, demanding that these good-for-nothing bunch of gypos, hippies and weirdoes moved on.

Several of the travellers stood facing the men, Jon in the front, speaking calmly to them, refusing to be intimidated. In every town and city they had ever stayed in Jon had spent hours in the local libraries, devouring among others, law books, and he quoted politely and nicely chapter and verse regarding their rights. He knew it would take months for a court order to be obtained, by which time they would be long gone.

The Estate Manager and Games Keeper conferred, the other men milling about, waiting, looking more bored and cold than menacing. Jon noticed one man, tall and blond, keeping his eyes down, stooped and shuffling his feet on wet leaves and moss, apart from the others, a gun crooked in one arm, three gun dogs on leads sat by him, looking around, tails waving merrily, at least some were happy, thought Jon, smiling at the dogs.

Jon felt uncomfortable though, he recognised the body language. He stared and stared until the young man looked up at him and met his gaze. It was his older brother. Jon chose not to say anything; he didn’t want to compromise Joe or his career.

It was decided to seek His Lordship’s advice regarding the law. They left, and as they did, Joe trailed behind. As he passed Jon he muttered which was his cottage and invited them over. Chrissie and Jon visited that evening.

For a few weeks everything was fine. The brothers were glad to see each other; their girlfriend and wife became great friends. Chrissie and several of the other women from the camp would go around in the daytime to use the bath and the washing machine. Rose seemed happy with the female companionship.

Then Joe persuaded Jon to allow him to invite their parents, Chrissie’s too, to Sunday lunch. It went badly. Chrissie’s parents refused to come, Jon and Joe’s came, but demanded Jon come back, and when he refused and dared argue theology and question his Mum’s faith and his upbringing, she told him he was no longer her son. She then turned her bile on Rose. He and Chrissie soon realised that this was her normal behaviour towards Rose – attack her for not being born Catholic, for not understanding what she had converted into, which they knew to be unfair as Rose had met Joe at church after she had converted, she had done it for love of God not love of Joe, and worst of all, Jon’s mother accused Rose of using contraceptives. They had, after all, been married over three years and there were still no babies. Rose was close to tears and Joe came to her defence, but she just accused Rose of deceiving her husband. Things grew more and more unpleasant when Jon and Chrissie felt obliged to speak and his mother turned on them again. Finally Joe demanded his parents leave, defending both wife and brother.

After they left, Rose burst into tears and Jon and Chrissie weren’t far behind. Joe hugged his younger brother tightly before taking his wife upstairs. Once Chrissie had composed herself she went upstairs to talk to Rose while Joe and Jon attacked the beer.

Later that night, sat outside their van around the fire Chrissie told Jon that Rose had been to the doctors and had all the tests possible and she was fine, it wasn’t her. The problem was probably with Joe, but he refused to acknowledge it, see a doctor to see if he could be helped.

The next night Rose and her friends, Tracey and Mary, sat in front of him. Mary built a spliff, Tracey made him tea and Chrissie handed him a plate of his favourite butterbean and mushroom stew with homemade bread from Rose.

Tracey explained, over a couple of pots of tea and a couple of spliffs, how they had gone over to Rose’s cottage to use the washing machine and while they were they had talked through Rose’s problem. Rose was desperate to have a baby, not to please her mother-in-law, but because she wanted one. Every woman had a right to be a mother, didn’t she?

Mary explained that their children, Tom and Lucy, who were days apart in age, shared the same father. He was a gay friend and he had provided the sperm – not sex or anything. He had... um, provided the semen which the girls had put into a turkey baster and then impregnated each other with. Did that sound like a good idea?

Rose was so lovely, added Chrissie, and so unhappy. Jon looked so much like his elder brother, didn’t he? Hadn’t he noticed that? How they might even be twins?

Jon hadn’t liked the way this conversation was going.

Of course, Chrissie went on, Joe must never know. “And we’ll be gone soon. You’ll be doing your brother a favour, that’s all; it’ll be his child, really. And of course,” Chrissie had added seductively, “I’ll help you with the... um production,” she giggled.

Stoned, full of favourite food, hot tea and warm bread, sitting in a clearing of a beautiful beech wood, a warm fire, and a blanket around his shoulders, happy and warm and contented, despite the frost on the ground, Jon found himself agreeing. 

They waited for Rose’s cycle to become at the right time, as it were. They did it for three days in a row, to be sure. Chrissie and Jon in the spare bedroom, to then hand Tracey and Mary the necessary. They then took it to Rose it the bedroom. Rose then had to make sure she and Joe had a... romantic, fun, night for those three nights.

Two days after that, his Lordship arrived with his men, guns, dogs, and Land Rovers and moved them on. The police looked the other way as several windows were smashed and belongings strewn across the clearing and the hippies not even allowed to pick up their things. So, forced to leave, Jon never knew if their little ‘experiment’ had been successful, but he knew that it had got him and Chrissie thinking. It took more than a year for them before Chrissie fell with Martha; so all in all, they doubted that Rose had got pregnant. They travelled to Wales after that, then the West Country, and a few weeks after Martha’s birth, they left the country for five or so years.

*

Jon looked up, he’d been staring into his beer glass the whole time he’d related the story, “You were nearly eight, something like that, the first time I saw you,” he said. “Do you remember? At our wedding?”

James frowned, he’d been trying and failing to take on all he had been told; shocked and confused and touched in equal measure, he was grateful for a distraction.

“Wasn’t it in Wantage? The Town Hall and then the back room of a pub?”

“Yeah, a mate ran that pub. We had a wild time, friends from different bands and that played music. Everyone did something. Chrissie’s best friend Suze made the cake.”

“Folk,” said James. “And punk. You wore a top hat. Yeah, I remember, black frock coat and top hat over a silk purple shirt and striped trousers. You had your hair in a plait and had eyeliner. Chrissie wore this purple thing, too, tight bodice, sort of fringes or frills and the end of her skirts – they were layered up, weren’t they? And you could see her purple Doc Martins. Even her hair was purple. It wasn’t dreaded, then, was it? All loose and wild and purple. I remember thinking I’d never, ever, seen anyone dressed like either of you and it was amazing. Like something from a fantasy book or fairy tale. I loved it. I was what, seven?”

“Eight, I think.”

“Chrissie walked down the aisle with a stick.”

“Yes, yes she did. She was already... sick. We knew then, she was going to... you know, but we kept it a secret, how serious it was. It was why we married. The way the law was back then, when she... went... they couldn’t have taken Martha into care if we weren’t married.”

“That’s crazy! Stupid! You’re her Dad and...”

“It’s alright baby. S’sh. I don’t think the law’s like that now. I remember that day for you as much as for me and Chrissie. As we walked back down the aisle together, man and wife, which, you know, didn’t feel a whole lot different, you know? I loved her before and after, now she had my name made no difference. Made a difference to the family, to the stuck up snooty cows at the school Martha had started, but...me? I loved her the same. Anyway, as we walked down she whispered to me, ‘That must be him. We gave them a son. We did good, don’t you think?’”

*

Jon, in all honesty, had forgotten what he’d agreed to all those years ago. After all, what had he done apart from get a bit dirty with Chrissie in his brother’s back bedroom for three days in a row? He’d not been a party to anything that had followed. But now Chrissie had pointed the boy out, he couldn’t keep his eyes off him. He was tall for his age, skinny as a rake, with a solemn, serious, expression in an angelic face – his eyes were like Martha’s, as was the bone structure of his pretty face. And he was pretty, like Martha. It scared him, how alike they were.

However, the only family that were there were Rose and Joe, and a sister of Chrissie’s, the rest of the family had either refused or the couple had already been so hurt they didn’t bother sending the invites. The family had been ignoring the runaways since their return to Oxfordshire. There had been no fatted calf for the prodigals, and nor would they have wanted one, vegans as they were.

When Joe slapped him on the back and said heartily, “You can tell they’re cousins, eh?” and nodded drunkenly towards where Martha and some children of their friends were trying to encourage James from under the table where he had made his den and onto the dance floor to pogo with them to Spike’s crazy guitar rhythms. Little James was having none of it. Jon had breathed a sigh of relief at his brother’s obvious lack of suspicion but almost thumped him as if they were still eight when Joe added, “Stuck up little shit, my boy.”

*

“You spent all night sat under a table, reading. Even Martha got bored and left you alone eventually.”

James smiled, “Actually, I did venture out occasionally to replenish my plate. I think I got addicted to veggie sausages and tofu satay that night. Although I don’t think I ate tofu before, or ever again, to be honest.” 

“Well, you must have been undercover, I don’t remember you other than under that table all afternoon and evening. And I watched you, James, you looked so sad and solemn, as if you had the world on your small little shoulders. I should have asked you if you were okay. I should have...”

“I wouldn’t have told you, you know. And I made damn sure no one was looking when I snuck out. Sneaked out? Whichever. I didn’t want a fuss. Drunks fuss over cute kids at weddings. I hated all that.”

“You’d have probably made an excellent spy, then James, coz I was watching you, couldn’t take my eyes off you. What will you do, now you’ve left the Seminary? Have you decided yet?"

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“I’m going to join the police force.”

“The what? The police? You?! You’re going to be a policeman?”

“Yes.”

“You!”

“Yes,” James said firmly, in a definite tone that brooked no further argument.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated, as is feedback of anytime. It gets kind of lonely here you know, not having time, space, energy or health, to be part of the fandom in any pro-active way like lots of you guys do!

**Author's Note:**

> This is a good part of the second or third thing of the stories I first made up for my daughter as bedtime stories back in 2010. It is posted here with love for her to put onto her Kindle. We had such fun role playing James and Martha for hours when she was stressed and/or ill.
> 
> babyklingon, I hope it makes you feel happy while you feel so ill x


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